This watercolour of the sun rising over the Nile with the silhouette of a lone dahabeeyah, a traditional cargo-vessel, on the left, was made by Edward Lear on his third visit to Egypt in 1867. The scene is bathed in purple hues and conveys a deliberately poetical quality.

Although Lear worked in the tradition of British topographical art, his drawings leave behind its documentary attitude, which recorded landscape and geographical features for the benefit of their antiquarian and natural historical associations. If, as in the case of his Egyptian images, the past is alluded to, Lear conveys it with a mysterious and exotic character, rather than attempting to re-establish the historical and particularly biblical topography which had drawn other travellers to the Near and Middle East. It is mostly the colours in their own right which are intended to trigger poetical sentiment in the beholder and characterize the scene as picturesque.